A PROMINENT opponent of the leadership of Taoiseach Brian Cowen has announced that he is planning to launch a website called “Fianna Fáil Nua”, aimed at revitalising the party.
Jerry Beades, a north Dublin businessman and member of the Fianna Fáil national executive, said there had been an initial meeting attended by “a number of people” on September 29th.
“It’s reached the end of the road. The IMF are in town and it’s really time for Brian Cowen to go, and he should go tonight,” Mr Beades said. “Unless Brian Cowen resigns immediately, all credibility has been lost.”
The entire Government should step down as well. “The whole Cabinet needs to go, but the problem we have is we’re in a financial crisis at the moment, [and] that cannot really happen,” Mr Beades told RTÉ’s Drivetime programme yesterday.
“I’m listening to what people are saying and I would agree the electorate has lost all confidence. We could have a situation, if Brian Cowen was to resign, that the President wouldn’t dissolve the Dáil and she would call all the parties together to actually . . . get a budget over the line and, in the New Year, call an election.”
He said no Government Minister was in attendance at the meeting on September 29th. “It was party activists that met and there was a proposal drawn up to set up a website and to go down the road, something similar to what Tony Blair did with New Labour in England.”
The aim of the project was “root and branch reform” of the organisation and to “never again to allow the ministers take control of the party, as they have, and have taken it away from the grass roots”.
He described a television news appearance by
Dermot Ahern and Noel Dempsey this week to announce the new speed cameras as “like Laurel and Hardy”.
Sinn Féin candidate Senator Pearse Doherty will take 40 per cent of first preference votes in the Donegal South West byelection next week, according to an opinion poll published yesterday.
Senator Brian Ó Domhnaill of Fianna Fáil polled 19 per cent and Fine Gael candidate Cllr Barry O’Neill 15 per cent. The poll was carried out by Red C on behalf of bookmakers Paddy Power.